Adobe Photoshop, no doubt is the most powerful and advanced photo editing software application but, not everyone is familiar with it and there are always alternatives so, here we have listed the best free photo editing software programs that fulfil the need of photo processing, but they can not be compared with Adobe Photoshop, though they are good for most of the photo editing tasks that Photoshop can do.
Here are some feature rich free photo editing software programs that are capable of making your photos look better and retouch them with cool effects.
SEE ALSO: Top 5 Best Feature-Rich Free Video Editing Software (Cross-Platform)
GIMP (www.gimp.org)
GIMP is a powerful GNU based image manipulation program. It is capable of retouching photos with expert quality tools. Gimp interface is modulized into a so called docks, and allow you to stack them into tabs and keep each tool open in their own window like Adobe Photoshop. Some of the handy features Gimp packed with are fix perspective distortion, lens barrel distortion and vignetting, channel mixer, new healing tool with perspective clone tool. Gimp also support various input devices and large number of file formats and you can extend it using GIMP’s plug-ins.Gimp is available to all operating system – Windows, Mac, Linux and few other open source OS.
Paint.NET
No doubt paint.net is a award winning free image and photos editing software for Windows operating system. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects and other various powerful tools. At the online forum you can get the support and plug-ins which helps extend the features on paint.net.
Photoscape (www.photoscape.org)
Photoscape lets you enhance photos in a fun and easy way. Photoscape has some nice features with various editing options, combine multiple images, animated GIF, print photos, splitter, color picker, rename photos in batch mode, raw converter, face search to find similar faces on internetand much more. Photoscape is available only to Microsoft Windows.
PhotoPad Photo Editor (www.nchsoftware.com/photoeditor/index.html)
PhotoPad is a simple, clean and easy to use photo editor. It is bundled with some great features like photo effects such as sepia tones, grascalle, vibnette, local blur and more, filter effects, removing red-eye and blemished, create collages and photos mosaics, direct upload to Facebook or Flickr, create video slideshowsand other great features. PhotoPad is available for Windows and Mac platforms.
PhotoPlus (www.serif.com/free-photo-editing-software)
Using PhotoPlus is a simple and effective way to enhance images. It contains the tools to straighten and crop photos, repair old photos, red eye removal, smooth skin, remove unwanted objects from pictures, adjust levels curves, brightness, contrast, paint, blendand more.PhotoPlus is available for Windows operating system only.
GIMPSHOP (www.gimpshop.com)
GIMPSHOP is a great alternative to Photoshop. You can feel the Photoshop performance and features by using GIMPSHOP and it is completely free open source GNU image manipulation program. For sure you’ll be addicted to this after first use. It is packed with all the powerful tools that you can expect from an image editing software. GIMPSHOP is available for Windows and Mac operating systems.
INKSCAPE (inkscape.org)
Inkscape is a powerful open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw. If you are missing vector support of Photoshop then for sure Inkscape is the best vector graphics software. Inkscape is available for all platforms.
Seashore (seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Download.html)
Seashore is a basic image editor for Mac OS X only. It’s open source image editor with some basic features of gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. However, it is not feature rich photo editor like GIMP but, fulfil the need of basic image editing.
PhotoFiltre (photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm)
PhotoFiltre make it easy to edit and apply effects and filters to your photos. It is a simple, easy-to-use free photo editing software program.
Photo Pos Pro (www.photopos.com/Photo-Pos-Pro-Free-Photo-Editor.asp)
Photo Pos pro offers you most of the photo editing tools to enhance and manipulate your digital photos the way you want. You can apply various effects using different selection tools in a full screen user interface. It supports graphics tools, special effects, different selection tools, layers support, script tools, batch operations and lots more.
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What a useful list! I would like to add one more photo collage editor – http://ams-collage.com/ . This tool will allow you to fix brightness, contrast, saturation, colors, or apply some fancy effect. Though, it has numerous useful and practical functions.
Unless we are talking about Photoshop or GIMP desktop software is becoming more obsolete day after day, since there are lots of amazing online tools to fix and style up a photo instantly. Like http://editor.pho.to/, http://www.fotor.com/ or http://www.befunky.com/create/
ArcSketch is free online sketch pad to draw/paint anything freely, it also
offers many tool to customise your canvas i.e. you can select the color of
pencil, you can select the size of pencil, you can customize the canvas size
etc. You can also upload the image on canvas and edit the way you want
http://www.arcsketch.com
Thanks you Gurmeet for sharing. These tools are very important to make a successful photographer. Beside these, I have a long list of such tools.
http://easyphotoedits.com
Looks great,i have been using an Automated tool called Mass Watermark for Post processing and watermarking my photos.I will try this too
your info is absolutely useful guyz, thanks